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Hide And Protect Formulas

BY STANLEY ZAROWIN

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Q.
When I circulate my statistical Excel worksheet to users outside my
company, I need to protect the underlying confidential formulas but also
keep the worksheet easy for users to enter their data. Any ideas?

A. Try using Excel’s Protection ; it
can hide underlying formulas and protect them from any attempted
change.

Here’s how it works: Before you enable Protection
be sure to format the affected cells (right-clicking opens
the menu that includes Format Cells ) so they display
their results—not the underlying formula—in the format of your
choosing. Then, while still in Format Cells , click
on the Protection tab, check Locked
and Hidden , and click on OK
(see screenshot below).

Now go to the Excel toolbar and click on Tools ,
Protection , Protect Sheet (see
screenshot below). Make sure to place a check next to Protect
worksheet and contents of locked cells . The defaults in
the menu under Allow all users of this worksheet to:
are Select locked cells and Select
unlocked cells . Check any other options you want and enter
a password, which appears as dots.

Be aware that if you fail to enter a password and click on
OK , the cell is still hidden but anyone can
reverse the protection by going through the above routine and clicking
on Unprotect Sheet .

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